Pelle the Conqueror, Martin Andersen Nexø [best fantasy books to read .TXT] 📗

jolted with the over-vigorous rocking, and every time the rocking foot slipped from the footboard it struck on the floor with the sound of a sprung wooden shoe. Pelle jumped up⁠—“she bumped so,” he said, bewildered. “What? No, you certainly dreamed that!” Kalle looked, smiling, under the rockers. “Bumped!” said Lasse. “That ought to suit you first-rate! At one time, when you were little, you couldn’t sleep if the cradle didn’t bump, so we had to make the rockers all uneven. It was almost impossible to rock it. Bengta cracked many a good wooden shoe in trying to give you your fancy.”

The farmyard here was like a great cradle, which swayed and swayed in the uncertain moonlight, and now that Pelle had once quite surrendered himself to the past, there was no end to the memories of childhood that rose within him. His whole existence passed before him, swaying above his head as before, and the earth itself seemed like a dark speck in the abysm of space.

And then the crying broke out from the house⁠—big with destiny, to be heard all over the place, so that Kongstrup slunk away shamefaced, and the other grew angry and ungovernable.⁠ ⁠… And Lasse⁠ ⁠… yes, where was Father Lasse?

With one leap, Pelle was in the brew-house, knocking on the door of the maid’s room.

“Is that you, Anders?” whispered a voice from within, and then the door opened, and a pair of arms fastened themselves about him and drew him in. Pelle felt about him, and his hands sank into a naked bosom⁠—why, it was yellow-haired Marie!

“Is Karna still here?” he asked. “Can’t I speak to Karna a moment?”

They were glad to see him again; and yellow-haired Marie patted his cheeks quite affectionately, and just before that she kissed him too. Karna could scarcely recover from her surprise; he had acquired such a townsman’s air. “And now you are a shoemaker too, in the biggest workshop in the town! Yes, we’ve heard; Butcher Jensen heard about it on the market. And you have grown tall and townified. You do hold yourself well!” Karna was dressing herself.

“Where is Father Lasse?” said Pelle; he had a lump in his throat only from speaking of him.

“Give me time, and I’ll come out with you. How fine you dress now! I should hardly have known you. Would you, Marie?”

“He’s a darling boy⁠—he always was,” said Marie, and she pushed at him with her arched foot⁠—she was now in bed again.

“It’s the same suit as I always had,” said Pelle.

“Yes, yes; but then you held yourself different⁠—there in town they all look like lords. Well, shall we go?”

Pelle said goodbye to Marie affectionately; it occurred to him that he had much to thank her for. She looked at him in a very odd way, and tried to draw his hand under the coverlet.

“What’s the matter with father?” said Pelle impatiently, as soon as they were outside.

Well, Lasse had taken to his heels too! He couldn’t stand it when Pelle had gone. And the work was too heavy for one. Where he was just at the moment Karna could not say. “He’s now here, now there, considering farms and houses,” she said proudly. “Some fine day he’ll be able to take you in on his visit to town.”

“And how are things going here?” inquired Pelle.

“Well, Erik has got his speech back and is beginning to be a man again⁠—he can make himself understood. And Kongstrup and his wife, they drink one against the other.”

“They drink together, do they, like the wooden shoemaker and his old woman?”

“Yes, and so much that they often lie in the room upstairs soaking, and can’t see one another for the drink, they’re that foggy. Everything goes crooked here, as you may suppose, with no master. ‘Masterless, defenceless,’ as the old proverb says. But what can you say about it⁠—they haven’t anything else in common! But it’s all the same to me⁠—as soon as Lasse finds something I’m off!”

Pelle could well believe that, and had nothing to say against it. Karna looked at him from head to foot in surprise as they walked on. “They feed you devilish well in the town there, don’t they?”

“Yes⁠—vinegary soup and rotten greaves. We were much better fed here.”

She would not believe it⁠—it sounded too foolish. “But where are all the things they have in the shop windows⁠—all the meats and cakes and sweet things? What becomes of all them?”

“That I don’t know,” said Pelle grumpily; he himself had racked his brains over this very question. “I get all I can eat, but washing and clothes I have to see to myself.”

Karna could scarcely conceal her amazement; she had supposed that Pelle had been, so to speak, caught up to Heaven while yet living. “But how do you manage?” she said anxiously. “You must find that difficult. Yes, yes, directly we set out feet under our own table we’ll help you all we can.”

They parted up on the highroad, and Pelle, tired and defeated, set out on his way back. It was broad daylight when he got back, and he crawled into bed without anyone noticing anything of his attempted flight.

III

Little Nikas had washed the blacking from his face and had put on his best clothes; he wanted to go to the market with a bundle of washing, which the butcher from Aaker was to take home to his mother, and Pelle walked behind him, carrying the bundle. Little Nikas saluted many friendly maidservants in the houses of the neighborhood, and Pelle found it more amusing to walk beside him than to follow; two people who are together ought to walk abreast. But every time he walked beside the journeyman the latter pushed him into the gutter, and finally Pelle fell over a curbstone; then he gave it up.

Up the street the crazy watchmaker was standing on the edge of his high steps, swinging a weight; it was attached to the end of a long cord, and